Friday, May 11, 2018

Russia's controversial floating nuclear power plant has headed out for
its first sea voyage.

The Akademik Lomonosov left the St. Petersburg
shipyard on Saturday and will be towed through the Baltic Sea and around
the northern tip of Norway to Murmansk, where its reactors are to be
loaded with nuclear fuel.

On Saturday a new floating nuclear power plant left St. Petersburg,
Russia, towed by two boats.
The two-reactor, 70MW floating power plant
is headed through the Baltic Sea and north around Norway, to a Russian
town called Murmansk, where the boat will receive its fuel.

After a period of time in Murmansk, the power plant will be towed to a
small Arctic town called Pevek, according to German broadcaster Deutsche Welle.
The floating nuclear power plant, called the Akademik Lomonosov,
doesn't have any of its own propulsion hardware, so being slowly towed
to its destination is a necessity.
The company that built the plant,
state-owned Rosatom Corporation, said in a press release
that the second stage of the journey, from Murmansk to Pevek, will
commence in 2019, with fuel and crew aboard the boat/power plant.

Once the plant reaches Pevek, it will be used to power the
100,000-person town, a desalination plant, and oil rigs. Rosatom says
that the Lomonosov is intended to replace the region's Bilibino
nuclear power plant, which provides 48MW of nuclear power and was built
in 1974, as well as the Chaunskaya Thermal Power Plant, which is now 70
years old.
Bilibino was once the northern-most nuclear power plant in
the world, but after the Lomonosov is in operation, it will inherit that title.

The project has not been without the kinds of delays that nuclear projects seem to inevitably face: in 2015, the Norway-based website Barents Observer wrote that the Lomonsov would be put into service by October 2016.

Meanwhile, critics are concerned that a floating nuclear power plant is a
situation ripe for disaster if the boat encounters extreme weather.
In a
statement, Greenpeace nuclear expert Jan Haverkamp cited concerns about the Lomonsov's
flat-bottomed hull and its lack of self-propulsion despite the fact
that it is intended to be anchored in relatively shallow water.

Rosatom's press release states that "All necessary construction works
to create on-shore infrastructure are underway in Pevek. The pier,
hydraulic engineering structures, and other buildings, crucial for the
mooring of FPU [floating power unit] and operation of a FNPP [floating
nuclear power plant] will be ready to use upon Akademik Lomonosov arrival."

A likely reason why Russia would want a floating power plant?
The
region in which it will be stationed is quite remote, and moving
machinery out by land is far more expensive than moving it by sea.Deutsche Welle
points out that climate change has made it easier for Russia to use
northern sea routes for transportation between the country's west and
east regions.

Correction: This story originally said that the Lomonsov was the world's first floating nuclear power plant but in fact the US military used a floating nuclear power planton theSturgis in Panama between 1968 and 1975.